Topic: Michael Shermer

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MichaelShermer (born 1954) is a science writer, historian of science, founder of The Skeptics Society, and editor of its magazine Skeptic, which is largely devoted to investigating pseudoscientific and supernatural claims.

Shermer is the author of several books that attempt to explain the ubiquity of what in his opinion are irrational or unsubstantiated beliefs.

Shermer is regarded by several critics as a cynic in skeptic's clothing and has been described as the ”Saul of Tarsus of the skeptic's movement” since he was once a fundamentalist who had an epiphany and then made it his life's mission to debunk pseudo-scientific claims.

Shermer then asked how many of these people would change their beliefs if scientists found that some of the probabilities Ross had cited were shown to be changing in a direction against belief.

Shermer gave a brief summary of the origin of the eye, noting that its structure was clearly consistent with the evolutionary model.

Shermer was finally forced to interrupt, pointing out that it didn't matter WHO or WHAT started the Universe, or who or what put amino acids together and proteins together to make life, the student was just putting the "g" word in front of everything to make his point.

MichaelShermer, the Founding Publisher of Skeptic magazine, is a genuine ghost-buster, a relentless crusader against superstition and pseudoscience.

MichaelShermer is the Director of the Skeptics Society, a monthly columnist for Scientific American, the host of the Skeptics Lecture Series at Caltech, and the co-host and producer of the 13-hour Fox Family television series, Exploring the Unknown.

MichaelShermer is mainly interested in understanding how science works as a system of thought, as a social system and as a psychology of beliefs.

Ultimately Shermer wants to reach half a million readers, like Scientific American, but, he notes, "that's a bit of a reach because selling ideas is much harder than selling personalities and celebrities".

 JB SHERMER is the Founding Publisher of Skeptic magazine, the Director of the Skeptics Society, a monthly columnist for Scientific American, the host of the Skeptics Lecture Series at Caltech, and the co host and producer of the 13-hour Fox Family television series, Exploring the Unknown.

www.edge.org /3rd_culture/shermer/shermer_index.html (559 words)

Denying History by Michael Shermer and Alex Grobman(Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-08)

Shermer is a professor of the history of science and the founder of Skeptic magazine -- a publication dedicated to debunking scientific hoaxes using the tools of standard logic as well as the scientific method.

Shermer and Grobman argue that in developing an alternative explanation, it is not enough to extrapolate from individual elements, such as a missing lock on the door of a gas chamber.

Shermer and Grobman show how some editors of these newspapers and even members of the faculty have been duped into publishing these ads because they erroneously believe that this is a free speech issue, which it is not.

Here Shermer expands his ideas of separation of church and science a little more closely by examining what he calls "the borderlands of science." He is trying to make a distinction between those things which are on the fringe but still good science and those things that are clearly not scientific.

Shermer begins with a bold objective- trying to lay down demarcation lines between generally accepted science (as is generally accepted by scientists themselves), iffy propositions which he calls borderlands science, and a large group of topics that he labels non-science and pseudo science.

Shermer uses interesting stories, facts and ideas to relay his message that science may not always be as cut and dry as we may think, but its the best method we have of interpreting the world around us.

It was with great amusement I have read MichaelShermer's interview with CNN about the Mexican UFO incident....but I guess after all, people like him make a living out of debunking and "skepticism".

I don't know much about flares but I guess the movement of the objects was too linear to be a simple flare...and once again here we are, they are actually ignoring the crew's account of the event and the footage itself.

Mr Shermer is not debunking nor practicising true skepticism, he is simply lying.

Shermer dubs these "borderlands" sciences, theories that -- for now, and in his eyes -- land somewhere between firm-footed disciplines (evolution, quantum mechanics) and faddish bunk (Freudian psychoanalytic theory).

In one chapter, Shermer looks at the life of Carl Sagan who, in his relationships with UFOlogists and SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) people, managed to strike an admirably "exquisite balance" between curiosity and doubt.

Shermer spoke to Salon about the myth of genius, hypnotism and Tiger Woods from his office in Los Angeles.

MichaelShermer, the publisher of Skeptic Magazine and author of the bestseller Why People Believe Weird Things, isn't just skeptical about pseudoscience, junk history, and the paranormal.

Shermer made his political beliefs clear in the November 2004 issue of Reason magazine.

Shermer is the author of The Borderlands of Science: Where Sense Meets Nonsense (2001); Denying History (2000), How We Believe: Science, Skepticism, and the Search for God (1999), and Why People Believe Weird Things (1997).

Shermer tries to pretend that the revisionists are "deniers" who "deny the Holocaust" as a general phenomenon.

MichaelShermer tries to make it appear that David Cole is somehow in the wrong just because he went there, looked at the evidence, and tried to draw a conclusion from it.

According to Dr. Shermer, this is how "convergence" works: First you construct a picture of the whole thing, the Holocaust -- the menacing speeches, the trains, the unloading platforms, the gas chambers, the ovens, the burning pits, the mass graves, the starving prisoners in the camps at the end of the war.

MichaelShermer is the Founding Publisher of Skeptic magazine and the Executive Director of the Skeptics Society.

MichaelShermer, as head of one of America’s leading skeptic organizations, and as a powerful activist and essayist in the service of this operational form of reason, is an important figure in American public life.

Shermer's books also include In Darwin’s Shadow, a biography of Alfred Russel Wallace, the co-discoverer of natural selection, The Borderlands of Science, which explores the fuzzy boundary between science and pseudoscience, and Denying History, which takes on Holocaust denial and other forms of historical distortion.

Shermer has just finished two books, Heretic-Scientist, a biography of Alfred Russell Wallace, and The Chaos of History, on the application of chaos theory to human history.

MichaelShermer wrote the bestseller "Why People Believe Weird Things" which was published in 1998, and he's currently working on another, much anticipated book entitled "Why People Believe In God."

www.arches.uga.edu /~skepticx/bio-shermer.html (149 words)

Amazon.com: Science Friction : Where the Known Meets the Unknown: Books: Michael Shermer(Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-08)

Shermer, a skeptic by nature and trade (he founded Skeptic magazine), reveals how scientific reasoning can remove blinders in any field of study and why some biases are, nevertheless, unavoidable.

Shermer delights in debunking superstition and ignorance about science and considers it a worthy vocation since 45 percent of Americans, according to a 2001 Gallup survey Shermer cites, believe that God created humans a few thousand years ago.

Shermer's style reminds me somewhat of Gould himself since both men write readable prose that sometimes tends toward the ornate, replete with allusions and asides as well as a tendency toward a fine examination of relevant minutia.

The encyclopedia features a prologue and epilogue by the editor, MichaelShermer, on the nature of an difference between science and pseudoscience and sense and nonsense.

MichaelShermer is the founding publisher of Skeptic magazine, the director of the Skeptics Society, contributing editor and monthly columnist for Scientific American, and the host of the Skeptics Lecture Series at Caltech.

Shermer is not afraid to debunk anyone or anything--even if it is something he partially believes in.

Perhaps the most interesting observation Shermer makes is with regard to the similarity in the flawed methodology that all the proponents of weird things use.

Shermer also reveals the darker and more fearful side of wishful thinking, including Holocaust denial, creationism, the recovered memory movement, alien abduction experiences, the satanic ritual abuse scare and other modern witch crazes, extreme Afrocentrism, and ideologies of racial superiority.

MichaelShermer is the Founding Publisher of Skeptic magazine, the Director of the Skeptics Society, a monthly columnist for Scientific American, the host of the Skeptics Distinguished Science Lecture Series at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), and the cohost and producer of the 13-hour Family Channel television series, Exploring the Unknown.

According to the late Stephen Jay Gould (from his Foreword to Why People Believe Weird Things): "MichaelShermer, as head of one of America's leading skeptic organizations, and as a powerful activist and essayist in the service of this operational form of reason, is an important figure in American public life."

Science & Technology at Scientific American.com: Common Sense -- Surprising new research shows that crowds are ...(Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-08)

Of the four major shuttle contractors--Lockheed, Rockwell International, Martin Marietta and Morton Thiokol--the last (the builder of the defective solid-rocket booster) was hit hardest, with a 12 percent loss, compared with only 3 percent for the others.

A detailed study of the market (a sizable crowd, indeed!) by economists Michael T. Maloney of Clemson University and J. Harold Mulherin of Claremont McKenna College could find no evidence of insider trading or media focus on the rocket booster or on Morton Thiokol.

MichaelShermer is publisher of Skeptic (www.skeptic.com) and author of The Science of Good and Evil.

He elsewhere suggests that we abandon the label "atheist," as a means of possibly overcoming the stigma attached to this pejorative word.

Meanwhile, Shermer's suggestion has another problem: it seems to relegate all of atheism to the realm of fundamentalism.

A dogmatic thinker might say, "There are no gods," but I say, "I have yet to hear a valid god-claim." I'd rather see the word "atheism" divorced from any connotation portraying atheism as innately dogmatic.

I think that Shermer overestimates the scalability of "tribe" if this is to be the glue that binds the free market together.

Jan 11, 2006 3:42:59 PM With respect to Shermer's thesis, it's nothing new except for his supposition that free trade and the satisfactions engendered manage their effects by means of chemical effects on the human nervous system.

Shermer goes further and surmises a connection between economics and evolution--he finds a similarity in their form with the specific linking element being that both achieve their result through the mechanism of competition.